mag 03

Ericsson trials HetNet-friendly ‘City Site’: Would you like ads with your base station?

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As cities get more populated and data usage increases, cracks start to show in traditional mobile network layouts – they just can’t handle the load. Many see the solution in so-called heterogeneous networks, or HetNets, which involve a range of different cell types rather than simply relying on the macro-cells we know and love (or loathe, depending whose skyline they’re ruining).

Ericsson is a keen HetNet proponent and the Swedish networking giant has just launched a commercial trial of what it calls the City Site “integrated solution” in Nanning, the capital of China’s Guangxi region, alongside China Mobile. The four-meter-high (13-foot) package includes a standard Ericsson base station in this case, along with an integrated multidirectional antenna.

The “Omni Antenna” in question is rather short-range (up to a couple of hundred meters) and relatively close to the ground, which fits in nicely with what Ericsson is trying to achieve here: network densification, a central tenet of HetNet architecture.

HetNets will need to involve not only a variety of cell sizes and types – from macro-cells to pico-cells to Wi-Fi offload points — but also cells at different levels and layers, in order to solve the challenges presented by specific locations. Tall buildings are a challenge when you’re trying to serve thousands of people on street-level, and this kind of thing may be part of the solution.

But densification isn’t the only thing that’s going on here. Ericsson’s City Site design also allows add-on modules for video ad screens, clocks, touchscreen real-time information displays and so on. The company told me this could “provide high performance broadband coverage together with fulfilling a city’s needs for de-clutter, aesthetics and add-on applications like information or advertising.”

This is a good indicator of how we can expect to see our ever-increasing mobile broadband requirements change the cityscapes around us. I’m not sure it really amounts to de-cluttering, though — ads aside, there’s something to be said for discreetly sticking cells on lampposts and other existing street furniture.


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gen 22

Big in India, Swedish phone directory service Truecaller hits 10M user milestone

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Despite the rise of mobile malware, the easiest way for ne’er-do-wells to target phone users is still through old-school scams, such as spam calls. A few years ago, some Swedes set up a service called Truecaller to battle this phenomenon, and today the company is announcing that it’s picked up 10 million users.

Truecaller is an international phone directory of sorts that covers both fixed-line and mobile phones. It picks up numbers in two ways: by partnering with national phone directory services, and by getting users of its apps to upload their own smartphone address books.

The idea is that, when a user sees an incoming call from a number they don’t recognize, they can use Truecaller to check who it is. The company maintains a community-driven list of known spammers, so miscreants get flagged up quickly.

Truecaller spokesman Kim Fai Kok told me on Tuesday that, while the user-base spans 128 countries, the vast majority of those 10 million users reside in India. Although this was initially surprising, it does make sense given the company’s platform trajectory.

“We developed first for Nokia,” he said. “Nokia smartphones have always been big in India, and when people move onto Android and iPhones they bring the good apps with them.”

The service’s popularity in India has not been without controversy, with reports last year pointing out that some senior politicians were in Truecaller’s database despite having unlisted numbers – this was down to the ability of Truecaller’s users to upload their personal address books, which clearly contained those numbers in some cases. That said, the company points out that its customers use numbers to look up names, not vice versa (unless the numbers come from public directories anyway), making this less of an issue than it may at first seem.




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giu 29

13th Lab raises $700,000 to build its ‘UI for reality’

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Augmented reality has been through its ups and downs over the last few years — going from exciting and futuristic to gimmicky and lame and everywhere in between — but it could be back up again thanks to Google Glass, the company’s much-talked-about AR headgear. And that timing couldn’t be better for Swedish startup 13th Lab, which has just raised a seed round from Nordic investors Creandum to help expansion.

13th Lab, which I wrote about last year, is building an augmented reality service. But it’s not any old augmented reality: it’s an iOS-based service that uses technology part-developed by NASA to let your device see and understand the world around it. It’s complicated stuff — the same technologies used in the Mars Rover or autonomous aircraft — and it’s compressed into a version that can run on your mobile using just its sensors.

And, crucially, it’s all built into the company’s iOS browser, Pointcloud.

“We’re very different from other AR and computer vision companies,” says co-founder Petter Ivmark. “Everything is done on an open web model… that’s great for people, because there’s nothing new to learn, no new language: it’s just HTML and JavaScript.”

The product is really two-fold: 13th Lab provides a browser that lets users surf the web as normal on their iPhone or iPad, but can add virtual moments in whenever the device recognizes images and objects. It’s a sort of souped-up QR code that’s already being used by Swedish megapublisher Metro to add interactive elements to its newspapers, and very accessible:

But at a deeper level, it also offers an SDK to app developers to let them build AR into their own products — potentially enabling companies to develop complex services that take augmented reality somewhere new.

Here’s a video to guide you through.

You can easily imagine, say, a certain Swedish furniture store offering an app that let people check what the sofa they’re interested in would look like in their living room in 3D glory.

Ivmark says the company isn’t just going to be one of those horrific AR vehicles, but a platform for creating a “UI for reality.”

“We’re really pushing for utility, not just ad-based use cases or being gimmicky,” he told me. “It’s not just seeing a fire-breathing dragon on your desktop; we’re over that stage. Now there’s been a resurgence with image detection and recognition, but in most cases it’s used for advertising, marketing. We want to provide something that has real value.”

That bigger vision is what brought in a €550,000 ($700,000) round from Creandum, the northern European-focused venture firm that is an investor in the likes of Spotify, Videoplaza and iZettle. And the money will be used for modest growth, says Ivmark: The company has low costs despite the complex technology it uses.

“We’ve gotten as far as we have with no outside funding at all — we’ve been doing this for two and a half years, and we don’t burn a lot of cash: we’ve been self-funded for a long time,” he says. “At the moment it works really well in smaller spaces like a room, but we want to take it bigger scale to whole apartments, airports, even outdoors.”

So what about Google Glass? Is Google’s interest in computer vision a threat to startups like 13th Lab?

“From our perspective it’s a really interesting development, especially because it’s Google and they have almost unlimited resources. Right now it’s just a small screen that shows you information: there’s no computer vision in there, and we think there should be — and will be — in the future.”

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giu 27

Wanna get paid $5 for iPhone photos? Foap makes it easy

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A photo I submitted for sale.

I have 2,514 photos sitting on my iPhone. So when I heard there was a company that will help me license those images and get paid for them via my phone, I was instantly intrigued. Foap is a Swedish company started by travel industry veterans who were always disappointed in the availability of stock photo art. The iOS app they built together is simple and elegant and is part iStockphoto, part TaskRabbit.

Here’s how it works: Download Foap, which is available starting Wednesday in the App Store (Android coming later) for free. After the quick and easy signup you start uploading photos from your phone you would like to sell, tagging them excessively (this helps to surface them for those looking to buy). Foap will first have to approve your photos. Those that make it through are put on the market, which is viewable through your own Foap profile page on the Web or via the app. All photos are priced at $10; Foap takes half, you get the other half.

Foap sells the photos via packages or individually. Within the app there’s a system that lets anyone purchase credits in advance, which can be traded for photos. The number of credits purchased will sometimes come with discounts.

So, who’s buying these photos? Any company looking for stock photo art, say co-founders Alexandra Bylund and David Los. Bylund worked for a travel agency that was constantly running up against a variety of problems finding interesting, usable photos. ”It was kind of boring to see the same faces all thetime in the big stock image sites,” Bylund said in a phone call Tuesday. “And one problem was that if we found a good photo, a nice, face, the other travel agencies found the same one.”

The photos often didn’t strike the right tone — not localized enough for style or place — and she also found them boring: “It’s almost like they’re the same very well-styled photos, without a spontaneous feeling, without the natural look.”

That pushed the pair to start Foap. They have $250,000 in funding from angel investors and a grant from the Swedish government. Their most prominent investor is Roland Zeller, founder of Switzerland’s biggest travel site, Travel.ch.

Foap went into open beta last month. There are 12,000 unique users submitting photos so far. Twenty thousand photos have been accepted and rated 200,000 times, according to the company.

Two examples of “missions” requested by potential buyers.

On a mission

The interesting twist is that Foap is not just a market for stock photos — Foap also takes requests. Or, in the app’s parlance, it takes “missions.” If a business wants a very specific photo — say, a girl standing on a sidewalk in New York City wearing yellow polka dots — they can send out a mission with a description and deadline. This shows up in a tab at the bottom right of the app. Anyone can go out and attempt to shoot the photo the company is looking for and submit it for review. The company chooses the one they like best, and Foap will get its $5, as will the photographer.

The licensing system is basic: the photographer owns the photos, the person who buys it for $10 is licensing it. But the photo can be relicensed/sold as many times as possible — so if your photo is good, you can make way more than $5 on one.

Some pointers if you want to try this out:

  • Getting your photo approved isn’t automatic. Of the 50,000 images uploaded to the service so far, 20,000 have been approved, said Bylund.
  • Tag your images. That will help shoppers find them.
  • Don’t rely on Instagram. Customers are not looking for photos with faux-vintage filters and frames; they need to be “as raw as possible” so the buyer can touch them up. But they do want photos taken with a mobile device — the point is to provide “natural-feeling” images, Bylund said.
  • Get permission from your subject before trying to sell an image showing the person’s face. This is both polite and will save you legal hassle later.
  • Get a PayPal account. It’s how you’ll get paid.

Foap is an example of an app that almost wouldn’t have been possible two years ago: not until the cameras on the iPhone and a variety of Android phones were equal to basic point-and-shoot cameras. And since the arrival of 5- and 8-megapixel smartphone cameras, people are starting to rely heavily on mobile phones for photos.

As a result, amateur photographers’ abilities have increased dramatically since then, says Los. “You don’t need to be a professional photographer to snap great photos nowadays,” he said Tuesday. “People are getting better and better.” So, too, are their opportunities for sharing and monetizing those photos.

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